January 2007.  Founding Brothers. The Revolutionary Generation, a Pulitzer Prize winning book by Joseph P.Ellis. This book tells several stories that illustrate some critical junctures in the founding of our country.  One of the things that I came away strongly from this book is the fact that the adversarial, two-party system has been an integral part of our government from day-one.  Ellis illustrates this dramatically making the opening chapter about the Hamilton-Burr duel.  My favorite chapter was about Washington's farewell address. Ellis is a big Washington fan, having grown up down the street from Mt. Vernon.  He paints a portrait of Washington as the one person who focussed the country west rather than toward Europe and entanglements. I found the discussion of Jay's Treaty to be VERY informative and insightful. This book does a great job in putting the reader back in time to see how fragile our republic was at the beginning. Also, better than most books (and my high school eduacation) shows the reader that the issues that tore the country apart with civil war in the 1860's had also been compromise issues at the time of the Constitution. I'd recommend this book to anyone who loves American History, or just history in general. It's well written and filled in a lot of gaps in my understanding of American History between the Constitution and the Civil War. Back to reading list
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